The Internet and the World Wide Web are rapidly expanding, with businesses and individuals hosting their own Web pages. This has created a demand for richer Web page capabilities, especially in the area of graphics and multimedia. However, the design and programming of the enhanced capability Web pages must remain simple, as not all Web page owners are sophisticated computer users. Nor should the use of graphics in a Web page require using external applications to program and debug these enhanced capabilities, which could greatly increase the cost of a solution. Instead, a user-friendly solution is desirable, where a standard text editor could be used and with human readable commands.
Most files downloaded and opened with a Web browser are pages formatted with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Native HTML provides the basic foundation for defining a Web page, although it does not specify a method for storing and retrieving a sequential series of extensible information, such as vector graphics commands and data. As such, graphics commands and data are typically stored in external files in a proprietary format which are accessed by the Web control via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). To create these graphics, graphics design programs are available to help the user, but these are an additional expense and require running the design program to modify the graphics. Furthermore, the graphics information is typically stored in a non-human readable (binary) format, which makes it difficult to debug because a user can not merely review and edit the HTML source code. Additionally, increased overhead, such as processing and network costs, are encountered when URL calls are made to process or execute external files.
Conventional Web controls and HTML conventions do not provide for reading defined information back in an ordered way. The standard definitions of HTML and the semantics of the HTML commands do not provide a method for retrieving a sequential series of commands or data, such as inquiring as to the value of the first variable defined, then the value of the second variable defined, etc. Rather, a Web page has a random, non-ordered address space, whereby the value of a variable is retrieved by specifically asking for it by name. Moreover, there is no concept of the ordering of variables inherent in the definition of HTML variables. Thus, a user cannot define a series of information using HTML in which a control can then sequentially read and process this data or execute these commands. This limits the capabilities of Web pages, including the availability of graphics capabilities in which performing a series of operations (such as linear transformations) is commonly needed.